


putting the dog to sleep

by fleuravis



Series: with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah [9]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Break Up, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 03:32:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17236580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleuravis/pseuds/fleuravis
Summary: He’s said the name so many times before, held it in his mouth, rolled it out in love and in anger, in sadness and in elation. Perfected the diction, the intonation of the word. Each phrase, each changing syntax, new meaning weaving its way through the name every time he says it. This time has a dull ache to it, though. The word feels heavy in his mouth.--Eventually, something has to break.





	putting the dog to sleep

**Author's Note:**

> title from the antlers' song by the same name. it's a terribly heartbreaking song that uses putting a dog to sleep as a metaphor for ending a relationship - it wrecked my life and somewhat inspired the flashbacks in this scene.
> 
> there's also a playlist that goes along with this specific part, although it kind of encompasses the deterioration of their relationship throughout the entire series. [you can hear it here.](https://cannibalteacups.tumblr.com/post/181572563540/putting-the-dog-to-sleep-gradence-fic-mix-for-my)

April, 2015.

 

_When Graves was 12 years old, he used to play in the park every afternoon with his new friend Newt. It was the first exciting thing to happen in Graves’ boring suburban neighbourhood when the Scamander family travelled over from England, bringing along the boy with a strange accent and bright orange hair. They were teetering on the brink of adolescence, young enough that they had no shame when their games of two-player basketball or soccer transformed into intricate fantasies of pirates or soldiers, still edging up to the line of teen years, where alcohol and drugs and sex would become paramount. Every day after school they walked to the park together, sometimes accompanied by Newt’s older brother Theseus, a blond and sharp-eyed boy who sometimes made Graves’ head feel light. He didn’t yet know why._

_The park, a bright plot of land across the street from their houses, seemed endless in these years. Later, when Graves would return to the neighbourhood, it would look so much smaller._

_On one cool and breezy afternoon, the wind whipping their overgrown hair around their heads, windbreakers pulled tight, Newt and Graves came across a tiny injured bird in an alcove at the roots of a wide oak tree. It must have fallen. Its wing was certainly broken, bent out at an odd angle. The entirety of its small body was shuddering, twitching. Laying in the grass in the shadow of the tree, face pointed up to the sky, paralyzed. Graves stared for a long, long time. Newt was unable to look, sensitive from the very beginning, teeming with bravado and feigned confidence in their battlefield games but balking at the sight of a hawk dipping down from the sky and snatching up a rabbit, of a squirrel flattened and dried against the pavement of the street._

_Eventually, Graves crossed the street to the large garage beside his house. Took his father’s hammer down from the wall._

_There was a moment then that everything froze. Graves has always been rational, logical, even as a young boy. Thinking with sensibility over sensitivity, brain over heart. Instantly protective of his timid friend, who was hunched behind him, eyes cast away. It only makes sense to put a suffering animal out of its misery; it is a kindness, an act of compassion — but as Graves raised the hammer over his head, poised to deliver that sentencing blow, the world stopped for just a second._

_The sky, open and blue, vast and endless above his head. The wind blowing waves into his hair, his shirt fluttering against his body, the branches of the oak swaying slowly. His skinny, prepubescent arms aching with the weight of the hammer, held up so high in the air, hovering. The bird, trembling in wait._

 

“Credence.”

He’s said the name so many times before, held it in his mouth, rolled it out in love and in anger, in sadness and in elation. Perfected the diction, the intonation of the word. Each phrase, each changing syntax, new meaning weaving its way through the name every time he says it. This time has a dull ache to it, though. The word feels heavy in his mouth. 

Credence is already in tears. Eyes red, wet and shiny. He stares hard at the floor, body curled in on itself, sitting in the chair by the window. His chair. Their apartment. _This is our home. This is where we live._

“I’m going to leave now.”

Credence looks up, finally. 

And there Graves is again, hammer raised above his head, ready to swing down. Only he’s frozen. Twelve years old again, a kid out of his depths, faced with the power, the choice to end a life. A child. A tiny god.

They’ve been clinging for far too long. Seven months ago, Newt and Tina left. Macusa’s record deal ended. They didn’t try to renew it. _We’ll figure something out soon,_ they’d promised. _We’ll come back._

But things just aren’t the same. He hides away with Credence in their apartment, living on the royalties, enough to last them a lifetime. No work, no obligations. They fight and fuck and fight more. Graves has done irreparable damage to the boy sitting in front of him now, a steady stream of tears cutting shimmering lines down his pale face, the parallel scars up his arms still shiny-pink. Body looking so small. 

He brings the hammer down.

“You can have the apartment. I’m going to stay with Sera until I find a new place. I don’t think I could live here anyway. It’s too much.”

Credence is biting down hard on his bottom lip, dry and cracked. Strands of hair are sticking to his cheek, damp with tears. Graves wants to pull him into his arms, fold him up and cover him with his body until he stops crying, until he _understands._ Understands that this isn’t a good thing anymore, that he only ever wanted to be a good thing for him, that he has done nothing but hurt him. 

“Credence, please. Can you say something?”

“I don’t want you to go.”

Whimper-soft, spoken into his hands.

 

_The sickening crack struck a wave of nausea into his core. Newt gasped behind him, small hands pressing hard over his ears, eyes squeezed shut._

_Graves, twelve years old and weeping for the bird in front of him, bloodstained hammer dropped into the grass, tenderly picking up the lifeless body. Cradling it in his hands. It seemed even smaller when he held it, crushed and utterly broken, mangled like a car-wreck against his pale skin. Smears of dark blood on his palms. He cried until he couldn’t anymore, until his sobs went dry and hollow, until Newt put a hand on his shoulder, comforting him. And then he gently set the bird back down in the alcove, covering it carefully with a few stray leaves. A funeral. A little blessing._

 

“You’ll be okay,” he says, trying not to choke, trying not to cry. Once he starts, he won’t stop, and he’ll pick Credence up and tell him _never mind, never mind, please just forget all of this_ and take him to bed, wrap him up, and they’ll be right back where they started. “You can have your own life now, Credence. You can do anything you want.”

Credence looks up at him, eyes flashing. “I want you. I don’t want anything else.”

Graves sighs, rubs his eyes with shaking hands. “I’m spiralling, Credence. I don’t want to keep pulling you down with me. I’m not good, and I know that you don’t see that right now, and I know that you love me regardless. But I’m hurting you, I keep hurting you, and I’m in a moment of clarity right now where I can see that. I need to take this moment and let it guide me. Because otherwise I’ll never go through with it and I’ll have your blood on my hands, one way or another.”

Credence is shaking his head, his teeth stained a little red from biting down on his lip too hard. “No,” he whispers. “No.”

“You’ll see it someday,” Graves says sadly. “And I hope you don’t hate me too much when you do.”

“I wouldn’t,” Credence says, verging on hysteria. “I couldn’t, I could never, I’m fine, Percy, I’ll be fine, please, can we just—”

Graves stands up. The boy freezes.

 

_Hammer raised. High in the air. Bringing it down, over and over and over again. It doesn’t stop. It never stops._

 

“I’ll come get the rest of my stuff in a few days. Take care of yourself, puppy. I love you.”

“Please,” Credence whispers, and his voice is so small, and Graves feels grass beneath his feet, wind on his face, the weight of the hammer’s wooden handle in his hands. Blood-stained palms. Sticky tears on his face.

He closes the door behind himself and steps into the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for sticking with me, guys. i know it hurts.
> 
> <3


End file.
